Capital Group Staying Course for Irvine Site
By DANIEL D. WILLIAMS
Los Angeles-based The Capital Group Cos. said it’s sticking with plans for a big Irvine office campus after a court setback on issues raised by a local environmental group.
The proposed campus hit a snag in January when a judge said an environmental report on plans to develop more than 600 acres of agricultural land next to Irvine didn’t fully address land use, hazardous materials and other issues.
Capital, a privately held investment firm that runs the American Funds Group mutual fund operation with $325 billion under management, plans to buy 52.5 of those acres from The Irvine Company to build a million square feet of office space.
“We continue to talk with the Irvine Co. on a daily basis to better understand the situation and the court’s decision,” said Chuck Freadhoff, a Capital spokesman.
Capital plans to wait out the legal and planning process instead of going after another site for a campus, said another company official who asked not to be named.
The company plans to build a campus in Irvine to house the 1,700 workers of its Western regional service center now in a three-building, 355,000-square-foot business complex in Brea.
The Brea workers are cramped and need more space, Freadhoff said. The Irvine facility would nearly triple the Brea site’s square footage, but Freadhoff denied speculation that Capital plans to relocate its Los Angeles headquarters to Orange County.
Capital said it has a target date of 2004 to complete the 615,000-square-foot first phase of the project, which would house the Brea workers. A second phase totaling 320,000 square feet would follow sometime before 2010 and house a projected expansion of the service center.
Because those dates still are far off, Capital doesn’t see the current snags altering its business plan.
“This is definitely an expansion,” Freadhoff said. “We’re looking to accommodate growth in the long term.”
Defend the Bay, a Newport Beach-based group formed in 1995 to protect Newport Bay, sued the city of Irvine and the Irvine Co. over the developer’s plans for a large swath of agricultural land near Jeffrey Road and the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway.
A year ago, city officials approved the Irvine Co.’s blueprint for 670 acres and the development of some 10 million square feet of office space.
“Defend the Bay filed the lawsuit due to issues dealing with hazardous material, energy use and land use,” said Peggy Schneble, manager of planning and development for Irvine.
The city is working on a supplemental environmental report for the project, Schneble said. The city still doesn’t know the extent of work that needs to be done, she said.
At the time of the court order, issued by Orange County Superior Court Judge William McDonald, Irvine Mayor Larry Agran characterized the ruling as “a boilerplate fix-it ticket.”
The issues need to be settled before Capital buys the land from the Irvine Co. The now-unincorporated land is set to be annexed by Irvine.
